The scholars will visit Dakar, Touba, Saint-Louis, Goree Island and other locales in the equatorial country, and they'll spend time in seminars with Senegalese professors and professionals to learn about the country's history and culture. They'll explore the local environs. Wright plans to shoot video and photos to bring the Senegalese experience back to her students. To illustrate her reasons, she mentions the story "To Da-Duh in Memoriam," by Paule Marshall, an author from Barbados. At the end of the tale, the grandmother, Da-Duh, dies. Her granddaughter comments that in death, "she looks like a Benin." The image is at once a definite thing — frozen in time, a traditional ivory mask from the African country of Benin — and an evocation of the African diaspora, the slave trade and the weight of that history.

MIDDLETOWN — For SUNY Orange professor Kathleen Wright, it's vital to bring literature to life for her students.

To inform her teaching, she has traveled the world. This summer, those travels will take her to the west African Republic of Senegal, a country with about 12.9 million people and a rich heritage. She'll go as one of 12 Fulbright scholars, as part of the Fulbright Summer Seminar Abroad program.

"They have a body of literature. They have a film industry. They have novelists that have been acclaimed," Wright says of Senegal. "I've traveled extensively in Asia. I've traveled and studied in Latin America. This allows me to make the classroom come very much alive."

The scholars will visit Dakar, Touba, Saint-Louis, Goree Island and other locales in the equatorial country, and they'll spend time in seminars with Senegalese professors and professionals to learn about the country's history and culture. They'll explore the local environs. Wright plans to shoot video and photos to bring the Senegalese experience back to her students.

To illustrate her reasons, she mentions the story "To Da-Duh in Memoriam," by Paule Marshall, an author from Barbados. At the end of the tale, the grandmother, Da-Duh, dies. Her granddaughter comments that in death, "she looks like a Benin." The image is at once a definite thing — frozen in time, a traditional ivory mask from the African country of Benin — and an evocation of the African diaspora, the slave trade and the weight of that history.

But it takes some knowledge of the culture to grasp the deeper meaning, Wright said. "My students don't have any idea."

Over the years, she's traveled to South Korea — including a two-year stint with the Peace Corps in the 1970s — and to India, Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Belize and Guatemala. She uses what she sees and learns about the socioeconomics, the food, the music, the culture to augment her lessons.

"I go with a particular idea in mind of what I want to focus on. Then, I incorporate it as I see fit in my classes," she said. "The information I get will fold into a short story course, or the novels course that I teach."

Director Ron Tschetter: The PCOL InterviewPeace Corps Director Ron Tschetter sat down for an in-depth interview to discuss the evacuation from Bolivia, political appointees at Peace Corps headquarters, the five year rule, the Peace Corps Foundation, the internet and the Peace Corps, how the transition is going, and what the prospects are for doubling the size of the Peace Corps by 2011. Read the interview and you are sure to learn something new about the Peace Corps. PCOL previously did an interview with Director Gaddi Vasquez.

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Story Source: Times Herald-Record

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Korea; COS - Senegal; University Education; Fulbright

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